Cowboy Underneath It All. Delores Fossen

with maybe being a little hurt.

      He’d always thought of Violet as his. Had always counted on her being there when he came home on leave, and not once had she ever asked to carry their relationship to the next level. She certainly hadn’t mentioned anything about putting a ring on it. Of course, if she had, it might have sent him running.

      The sound of more laughter pulled Kane’s attention back to the mirror. Violet and her pals were in a booth in the back corner of the pub, where they were tossing back pink-colored drinks with green paper umbrellas on them. Violet was wearing a bridal veil that sparkled even in the dim lighting. The veil-wearing was a little early, since according to the bartender, the wedding was still three days away.

      And the groom was none other than Kane’s old high school football buddy, Dax Foreman. Dax was a cowboy, of course.

      It wasn’t hard to find one of those around Spring Hill, since it was basically a town that’d built up around the sprawling McCord Ranch. But what riled every rileable bone in Kane’s body was that Violet had thought this pretty-boy bronco rider was more of a cowboy than Kane was.

      Pretty Boy wasn’t. No one was.

      Kane silently cursed. Yes, he’d been gone for a while, finishing up ten years in the Air Force. And beneath the flight suit he’d worn all those years, he was pure cowboy. Raised on a ranch not far from here. A ranch his parents had sold when Kane had left for the Air Force, but he’d recently rebought it.

      Hell, he wasn’t just a cowboy, he could be a poster model for one.

      He shifted his attention when the front door opened, and a woman hurried in. A brunette in a clingy red dress. The bartender made a sound of appreciation, and Kane could see why. All those curves and long legs. She stopped, no doubt to give her eyes time to adjust to the lack of light, and she glanced at the back of the room before she looked in Kane’s direction.

      Crap.

      It wasn’t a woman. Well, it was, but it was the wrong woman. It was Eliza, Violet’s kid sister.

      When the hell had she gotten curves like that?

      “I’ve been looking all over for you,” Eliza greeted. Except it wasn’t much of a greeting. She sounded annoyed or something.

      Since he hadn’t seen her in ages, Kane didn’t think he was the reason for the annoyance. Unless Eliza was miffed because he wasn’t the one marrying her sister.

      “I tried to call you, but your old number didn’t work,” she added.

      “I had to change providers since the old one didn’t have good service here.” That didn’t explain, though, why Violet hadn’t contacted him because he’d only switched two weeks ago. He was betting she’d been engaged longer than that.

      Volleying glances between him and the booth with the bridal party, Eliza caught onto his arm, practically dragging him off the bar stool. “We have to talk—now,” she said. “I’m so sorry about everything.”

      Kane didn’t put up a fuss about her dragging him, but this was unnecessary. Especially the apology. It wasn’t her fault that her sister was getting married.

      “I’ve already heard about Violet,” he assured her.

      Eliza didn’t respond to that other than mumbling the “I’m so sorry” again. She also just kept pulling him, and Kane didn’t like the direction they were heading. Right toward the women’s bathroom.

      “The waitress told me about your sister,” he repeated, hoping it would stop her. It didn’t. In fact, Eliza didn’t stop until she had him inside the ladies’ room, and had shut the door.

      “I didn’t think you were still in the dark, not about that anyway,” she said, as if that explained everything. It didn’t explain squat. “No one in this town would have kept that a secret from you.”

      Well, they hadn’t after the fact, but he would have liked a heads-up even if it’d come from the gossip mill.

      “Why’d you bring me in here?” Kane asked. “And since when did you start wearing dresses like that?”

      All in all, that last one just wasn’t a very good question, especially considering everything else that was going on. He followed it up with a comment that wasn’t very good, either. “It makes you look like, well, a woman.”

      She glanced down at her dress. Then gave him a look that was anything but flat. Her left eyebrow lifted. “I am a woman. A twenty-eight-year-old one. You’re the only man in Spring Hill who hasn’t noticed that.”

      Well, he was sure noticing now.

      Eliza had always been a looker, even as a kid. But she’d always been just that. A kid.

      Until right this minute.

      “You’re really twenty-eight?” he asked. That was a year older than the last woman he’d gone out with in South Carolina. Then Kane remembered something really important he should be addressing. “Why are we in the ladies’ room?”

      “Yes, I’m twenty-eight. Only four years younger than you. And that’s the reason we’re in here.”

      Kane did a mental double take. “Say what?”

      Eliza huffed. “I lied, all right! That’s what I’m sorry about. I heard from Lucky McCord that you were getting out of the Air Force and moving back to try your hand at running the ranch. Most people thought you’d never actually return, since you’ve owned the place for over a year and had barely stepped foot on it.”

      “Because I had to finish up my military commitment.”

      “I know, and I kept telling folks that you’d be home, but I wasn’t expecting you until next week.”

      “I finished up earlier at the base than planned.” He stopped. “How’d you find out I was coming home today?” He no longer had family here, and Kane hadn’t gotten around to telling Lucky or anyone else the exact day he’d be arriving, since he’d been so busy out-processing from the Air Force.

      Another huff from her. Obviously, these were not questions she wanted to hear, but Kane was trying to make sense of it. And it was just the beginning of the things he needed to ask her.

      “I went to your place to check on it, and there was an electrician there from San Antonio,” she explained. “He said you’d wanted the house checked to make sure everything was working fine because you were moving back today.” She huffed. “You know, it wouldn’t have killed you to let someone know.”

      Heck, he never let anyone know that. Kane just showed up. He’d been doing that for years, and no one had complained. Not until now anyway.

      Since he wasn’t getting anywhere with this discussion, he moved on to the next questions. “And what does any of this have to do with you lying? Better yet, what lie did you tell?”

      “Lies,” she corrected. Eliza groaned, squeezed her eyes shut a moment and leaned against the aqua-painted concrete-block wall. “God, I’m so sorry, but I told my sister that you and I had been texting and calling each other. And we do talk, remember?”

      Yes, around Christmas Eliza had called to chat. It was June now. And, yes, they had also texted a couple of times since then, but both the calls and the texts had been about business. Kane often hired some of the hands at Eliza’s family’s ranch to keep the yard and pastures in shape at his own place. Eliza was the business manager there, so Kane went through her to get that done.

      But why had Eliza told her sister about his needing the grass cut?

      Kane tried to follow that through to some logical conclusion, but he couldn’t come up with one. “Why the hell would you do that?”

      “Because I could see that Violet was falling for Dax, and I didn’t want there to be any obstacles.”

      He had to throw his hands up in the air. Not a good